Sony Pushes Memory Stick to Two Terabytes of Storage

With the Secure Digital (SD) card format, we have a maximum capacity of 2GB. Then they bumped up that capacity by offering us the SDHC format and, in the near future, we’ll be looking at SDXC cards for even more storage. Not to be outdone, Sony is pushing its own memory card format too. You will soon have a Memory Stick with a full two terabytes of space.

Just as the SD people decided to go with SDXC to indicate its extra capacity, Sony has also christened its new format as the Memory Stick XC. Interestingly, the MS-XC actually uses some SDXC technology to go with its exFAT file system. You’ve got to find a way to stuff that much memory into such a smal stick, right?

Having a lot of storage is all well and good, but you want to access that data in an expedient manner too. Sony is saying that the transfer speed will be as high as 480Mbps, assuming that your computer can handle that kind of thing. This translates to about 60MB/s using USB 2.0.

The assumption is that the first devices to support the new Memory Stick XC format will be in the digital camera and high-definition digital camcorder range. Like their predecessors, these devices will likely be backwards compatible with regular Memory Sticks too.